


Until the Day You Die

by squirenonny



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: 31 Days of Sadfic, CFSWF, F/M, WoR spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:37:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4265160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Renarin has a vision of Shallan dying--a vision that keeps coming back.</p>
<p>Written for CFSWF 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until the Day You Die

The vision took Renarin during a battle with the Parshendi—the Voidbringers—the stormforms. Whatever they were called, they were dangerous enemies. Once, Renarin wouldn’t have been allowed in a battle like this. For the visions, for the seizures, for the fact that he’d stopped wearing Shardplate once he realized it interfered with his Surges.

Now, with Kaladin fighting thunderclasts in the Purelake, Adolin coordinating the defense of Kholinar, Jasnah negotiating a treaty in Azir, and Dalinar caught up in endless meetings in Urithiru and wherever the Oathgates could take him… Renarin couldn’t play it safe. Couldn’t stick to healing and planning, even though that was what he was good at. There were too many battles, and too few Radiants.

So he and Shallan—the two Radiants with the least combat experience—had come to Tu Bayla together with what had once been Sebarial’s army. Now it, with half of Alethkar’s forces, answered directly to Dalinar, and to Urithiru.

Renarin felt the vision coming on and signaled to Teft, who had been staying back with the other guards. They couldn’t get close while Renarin fought; the ground around him was littered with vinebuds and jagged shalebark. Renarin’s Bladework was nothing spectacular, but his Growth could hold a battalion.

Bridge Four closed in now, holding a line around Renarin as he went to his knees and dismissed his Blade. Glys resumed his usual form, a scattering of light on the ground by Renarin’s knee. Back when he still wore glasses, it had been easy to mistake the spren for light refracting through his lenses.

Glys murmured comforting words that were lost on Renarin, just tinkling nonsense on the edge of his awareness.

The battlefield faded, and Renarin was… _elsewhere_.

* * *

_Another battle, but not in Tu Bayla. The land here was parched and barren. Not the Shattered Plains, but perhaps a Makabaki nation. Renarin never knew exactly where his visions took him, just when._

_Two hundred six days._

_Nothing moved in these visions. No wind, no creeping vines or grass. No spren—not even Glys._

_Just Renarin, and a battle frozen between one heartbeat and the next._

_Parshendi stormforms with red lightning building between their hands dominated the high ground. Below, a splintered human army fought and fell to creeping black creatures like shadows come to life. More dead than living filled the space. Those who remained fought, their swords and spears spilling smoke instead of blood or ichor._

_The longer Renarin looked, the more the shadow creatures swelled, darkness filling Renarin’s vision, slowing his thoughts. Fear pounded inside his skull. Not his own, but the soldiers’. If this vision came to pass, the fearspren would outnumber even the painspren on the gentle slope._

_Shadows come to life._

_Two hundred six days._

_Renarin turned away, blinked as his eyes remembered the sunlight warming the battlefield, and dimmed the illusion. He’d gained more control over these visions, since the first. A year ago, the visions had been so vivid that one small sliver of the scene would have overwhelmed him, drowning him in confused images and emotions. The shadows, a storm, a face. Panic, and despair._

_Now, at least, he could freely explore this future, if only for a few moments._

_He headed north, into the thick of the battle, walking the corpse-strewn trenches between armies. So few of the bodies were Parshendi. Fewer still were the shriveled husks of the shadow creatures._

_Something caught his eyes on the hill ahead. Two figures, glowing like lamps. A Parshendi Shardbearer, red light leaking from cracks in her armor. And Shallan. Her Blade clutched in the Parshendi’s armored hand._

_The Parshendi’s other hand held her own Blade, midswing, cutting unimpeded through Shallan’s neck._

_Stormlight traced Shallan’s veins, a stream of luminous vapor rising from skin that had already begun to dull._

_Her eyes burned._

* * *

Renarin awoke, heart hammering in his chest. His breath came too fast, too shallow. _Stop,_ he told himself. _Slow._ A mantra, second nature after so many visions. _Release the vision._ He heard the word in his brother’s voice, and it made the miles between them feel smaller. _Two hundred six days._ His lungs burned. Black hovered at the edges of his vision.

Glyphs covered the ground around him, scratched into the stony ground with a small, sharp rock. He’d torn one of his fingernails. Stormlight had already healed it, but dried blood caked the nail bed and spotted the glyphs.

The glyphs.

_Two hundred six days._

_Living shadows._

_Two hundred six days._

“Shallan!”

Glys’s voice, shrill and frightened. He’d been speaking? Yes. Yes, Renarin hadn’t been listening, but Glys had been speaking to him for some time.

_Two hundred six days._

“Gaz, cover me!”

Renarin looked up as Shallan ran toward him, uniform tattered, safehand glove dark with blood—not her own. Her hair escaped its knot in clumps and wisps, a fiery halo around her face. Blue eyes, wide with worry, _alive_.

“Renarin!” Shallan dropped to her knees before Renarin, pants tearing as she skidded. Her eyes flickered to the glyphs, then back to Renarin. “Are you alright?”

She knew not to touch him before he was ready, knew how much the visions could overwhelm him. But her hands twitched, held each other back from reaching out and holding him. Small motions, but if Renarin focused on them he didn’t have to look her in the eyes and remember—

_Her eyes burned._

A moan escaped him. Fear and urgency raged in his blood, a torrent that threatened to rip him apart from the inside.

“Breathe, Renarin.” Shallan’s voice came from far away, a breathless whisper. Renarin could have laughed at the irony. “It’s okay. I’m here. Breathe it out.”

Breathe it out. The Stormlight. He’d taken it in without realizing it, held his breath and kept the storm bottled inside. He released it now. The loss left him feeling drained, his hands trembling, but it quieted the panic tearing at his soul. Two more breaths and the last of the glow faded from his skin. Renarin pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.

“I’m right here, Renarin,” Shallan said. “Whatever you saw, it hasn’t happened yet. We’ll stop it. I promise we’ll stop it.”

Her voice washed over him. Not the words—those would help soon, but the vision was still too fresh in his mind to dismiss. It didn’t matter. Shallan’s voice was comfort enough.

He reached out, once he no longer had to physically hold himself together, and grasped her hand. She squeezed his in return. Beyond their linked hands, the battle raged on. How long had his vision lasted? How many Parshendi remained? He should be fighting. Him and Shallan. The army needed their Radiants.

With Shallan’s help, Renarin staggered upright. Glys sparkled in her hair.

“Take your time.” Shallan’s thumb rubbed circles on the back of his hand. “They’re doing fine.”

They were. The battle wasn’t over yet, but they were driving the Parshendi back. Instinctively, Renarin looked around for the shadow creatures. For an enemy Shardbearer. There were none, of course.

The Alethi were winning. They didn’t need Renarin’s help. In fact, if he tried to fight in his current state he would only make things harder for his guards. Knowing that didn’t make standing there feel any less shameful.

He turned back to Shallan while she was still surveying the battlefield, and let himself watch her eyes. Blue, and wet, and whole. Not yet burning.

Shallan turned, and Renarin dropped his gaze to their interlocked fingers.

“Will you stay with me?” he asked in a small voice.

Shallan’s voice lifted in a smile. “Until the day I die.”

* * *

Two hundred and six days passed.

The vision returned time and again. Not every day. Not even every week. There were other visions. Visions of Kaladin fighting the Assassin in White, who was supposed to be dead. Visions of highstorms and everstorms colliding. Visions of thunderclasts and shadows and other, more terrifying beasts.

The vision of Shallan’s death returned more often than most.

He found her after each of these visions. In her rooms, in the terraced gardens of Urithiru, exploring the depths of the tower. He never had to tell her he’d had the vision again; one look and she knew. And she talked—not about the visions, or about the future, but about plans and spren and fabrials, about Jasnah’s study of the Lost Radiants and about Navani’s study of Surgebinding.

She talked, knowing that all he needed was to see her alive, hear her voice. He watched her until the vision faded to a merely unsettling possibility. Sometimes, when the visions came late at night, they took walks under the light of the three moons or sat up talking in her room or his. Him in a chair far from the bed, for propriety’s sake, though Shallan asked why propriety mattered when they spent the night together at all.

After four days of stiff necks and sore backs from sleeping upright, Renarin gave in and sat with her on the bed—fully clothed, atop the blankets. He woke most mornings with Shallan’s head pillowed on his shoulder, her arm draped across his waist.

That was how the two hundred and sixth day began. Renarin didn’t want the moment to end, so he lay still, eyes closed, listening to Shallan breathe, until a knock on the door startled her awake.

“Brightlord Dalinar needs you in the Radiants’ room, Brightness,” Gaz called, his voice muffled by the door.

“Both of you,” added Teft. He sounded amused, and Gaz actually chuckled. In some ways, that had been the strangest thing about spending nights with Shallan. It forced Bridge Four and Shallan’s guards to interact. Teft had resigned himself to watching with Gaz, as the other bridgemen couldn’t stand the gruff, one-eyed man.

Now, months later, Teft and Gaz were almost friends.

Reluctantly, Renarin pulled away from Shallan. They didn’t speak as they changed. Several of Renarin’s spare uniforms had made their way to Shallan’s room at some point, though he didn’t recall ever bringing them. It meant he didn’t have to return to his own room before going to the meeting room on the top floor of the tower, a room people had taken to calling the Radiants’ room.

Today, he might have liked the delay. He knew what the summons was for, as did Shallan. The shadows from his vision—the Midnight Essence—had been found.

* * *

There was never any question of refusing to fight this battle. Shallan wouldn’t hide while the Midnight Essence killed the Azish people, and Renarin didn’t want her to. She joked that it was Kaladin’s influence—defend the defenseless and all that—but Renarin knew how much she hated seeing people hurt.

“Stay with me,” Renarin said as they led their army from the Oathgate to the city walls. The Parshendi gathered in the distance, on the barren slopes Renarin had walked two dozen times in his visions.

Shallan took his hand. “Until the day I die.” The light in her eyes said she meant it to be clever, but Renarin couldn’t make himself smile.

Then they were marching, the Parshendi waiting on the slopes, Midnight Essence rising from the ground. Stormlight sang in Renarin’s veins, blotting out the sounds of battle, of soldiers screaming and dying. Renarin fought. He Grew plants to snare and scatter the enemy. He knelt to heal the wounded.

Glys became a spear; Captain Kaladin’s forms came more easily to Renarin than Windstance or Vinestance or any of the others. Today, of all days, Renarin didn’t care how he looked, only how he fought. Roshar had seen stranger things than a lighteyes with a spear.

Shallan stayed close—out of reach in the way Renarin had so often seen Adolin and his father fight, but near enough to see. Near enough for him to intervene if the Parshendi Shardbearer appeared.

A pack of Midnight Essence closed in on Renarin and his honor guard, forcing him to turn away from Shallan. Renarin’s Shardspear cut through them easily, and Bridge Four fought even more skillfully, though with inferior weapons. In moments, all that remained were diminished corpses like empty leather sacks.

Leyten had taken a deep gash down his back in the fight. His Stormlight healed it slowly. Too slowly, in a battle like this. Renarin knelt to speed the healing while Drehy kept watch. He finished quickly and stepped back. Drehy helped Leyten up, running a worried eye over his tattered uniform, but Leyten squeezed his hand and smiled to signal he was all right.

Renarin turned, searching for Shallan.

The Shardbearer had arrived.

Renarin was running before the thought had fully formed. Behind him, his guards shouted and gave chase, but Renarin was faster, his Stormlight more efficient than theirs, his heart racing his feet to close the distance. Shallan’s face was grim, her grip firm on her Blade. She knew the risks. She knew how this might end.

The Shardbearer switched to a one-handed grip.

Shallan swung, and the Shardbearer’s gauntleted hand snapped up, grabbing the Blade.

Renarin screamed, threw himself forward. Glys dropped into his hand, spearhead glinting, stretching—

He caught the Parshendi’s Blade. The jolt of it nearly threw him off his feet, but he Grew vines around his feet and ankles to hold him. Arms straining, he held on, Shardblade and Shardspear wavering an inch from Shallan’s neck.

She froze for a split second, then spun away. Her back pressed hot against his. Her Blade swung in from the left. The Parshendi couldn’t get her free hand up to block it, couldn’t free her Blade without giving Renarin an opening. She twisted, and Shallan’s Blade rang against the Parshendi’s pauldron.

A spiderweb of cracks appeared. This wasn’t the first blow Shallan had landed; the Shardbearer’s Plate leaked Light from the breastplate and cuisses, and the left sabaton was one blow from shattering, exposing the Parshendi’s foot.

Shallan pressed her advantage, chasing the Shardbearer up the slope. Renarin fell back, arms shaking despite his Stormlight. From strain, and from fear.

_Too close,_ he thought. _Too close._

It was time to end this fight.

Renarin took in more Stormlight, most of what he had left in his purse and reached out for the plants around him. He could sense them, sleeping all around, waiting for the vibrations of the battle to pass.

Stormlight woke them and they Grew, racing toward the Parshendi Shardbearer, a thousand vines pressing at the cracks in her Plate. She stumbled, glanced down, frantically deflected Shallan’s thrust. The vines kept going, finding the smallest holes to slip through, reaching up, twining around beneath her Plate. They slowed her, but her Plate-enhanced strength was too much for simple plants.

Renarin Grew the vines just a moment longer, until he was certain they reached the full length of both arms and both legs.

“Shallan!” he called, Stormlight escaping like a winter’s breath.

Shallan didn’t turn, just fell back as Renarin dashed forward to parry the Shardbearer’s Blade. This—dueling, fighting in close quarters, was not his strength, but he could hold her for a moment, for long enough.

The Light coming from Shallan gleamed on the Parshendi’s Plate, flaring bright for an instant and then winking out.

The Shardbearer jerked to a halt, Blade pulled back, eyes wide behind her faceplate with shock and with fear. Her damaged sabaton shattered, other cracks widened…The vines visible through the cracks had turned the drab gray of Soulcast stone.

* * *

Renarin’s steps dragged as he and Shallan trudged down the stairs. After the battle, after setting up defenses and a warning system in case the Parshendi returned, after reporting to Dalinar, Renarin just wanted to sleep. But of course they had to contact the others. Jasnah and Kaladin and Adolin—they’d all wanted to be with Shallan today, but she’d forbidden it. They were stretched too thin.

So they’d gone their separate ways, but Shallan had promised to contact them all via spanreed after the battle. Even holding all three conversations at once hadn’t sped it up much. Kaladin was satisfied quickly enough, but Adolin didn’t seem to believe them when they said they were both unharmed, and Jasnah had a new theory she wanted to discuss with Shallan. Or so she claimed. Both Renarin and Shallan found her arguments rather weaker than normal and suspected she just wanted to speak with Shallan for a few extra minutes.

Eventually, though, even Adolin was satisfied, and Shallan packed up the spanreeds. They headed down to the living quarters together, silent but for the shuffle of their shoes on worn stone. Shallan fiddled with the strap of the bag containing the spanreeds. Renarin watched the movement, his mind replaying the near-miss endlessly.

_It’s over_ , he told himself. _She’s alive._

It didn’t help.

Suddenly they were at Shallan’s door, and Renarin’s throat tightened. He coughed into his fist. “I, um, suppose I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and turned to go.

“Renarin.”

He stopped.

Shallan waited for him to turn before, smiling, she said, “Stay with me?”

* * *

The vision came without warning. One moment, he was lying beside Shallan, his fingers in her hair, her safehand on his cheek. Then—

_A throne room. Not in Kholinar, or the Shattered Plains, or Urithiru. Beyond that, Renarin couldn’t say. From the bare-handed women in the paintings and statues around the room, it wasn’t a Vorin kingdom._

_Just looking at them made Renarin think of Shallan, of the heat of her skin. The smell of her hair. The playful suggestions and double entendres that made Renarin flush just remembering them…_

_One hundred thirty-three days._

_This vision was as still as the rest, but strangely deserted. It was nighttime, the thick glass windows dark, the throne room lit only by a few diamond broams left in the lamps flanking the door. Why bring him here? What was there to see?_

_The door was open, the hallway beyond as dark and empty as the throne room. No guards, no corpses, no servants scrubbing floors._

_Renarin shivered and walked on. He didn’t think about where to go but let his feet carry him. It was odd that he should have to search at all; the visions always dropped him in the middle of what he needed to see. Unless the castle’s emptiness_ was _what he needed to see?_

_Three more corners and he finally found signs of life. Or rather, of death. There were bodies, difficult to see in the gloom, but the dark stains surrounding them confirmed the men—the guards—were dead. Renarin came closer, peering at the nearest face._

_It was Vathah. One of Shallan’s guards. He didn’t wear an Alethi uniform, but his face was unmistakable._

_Breathless, Renarin stumbled into the chamber Vathah had died defending. A small chamber, more fit for a servant than a Radiant and lighteyes of the fourth dahn. There was no desk, one small chest—open and emptied, with rough workers’ clothes strewn about—a tiny bed._

_Shallan lay across the lumpy mattress. Almost he could have thought she was merely sleeping. Her eyes were closed, one hand resting on her stomach._

_But the symbol of the Lost Radiants had been cut into her forehead, and though the wound was not bloody, it was also not healed, though Stormlight glowed in a lamp on the wall._

* * *

It was easier to save her, this time. A description of the palace relayed to Jasnah told them Renarin’s vision had taken him to Rira. Thorough and repeated explorations of the vision over the course of the next one hundred thirty-three days told them what they didn’t even know to look for until day one hundred and two: the man who had been killing Radiants had found allies in Rira.

Shallan never had to infiltrate the castle, and so she didn’t die.

That didn’t end the visions.

A massacre on the Shattered Plains. An assassin in Kholinar. A siege on Urithiru. Time after time after time, Renarin saw Shallan die. First it was one vision in three, then three in four. They avoided one fate, turned the next defeat into victory. They pulled in their growing force of Radiants to defend Urithiru, changed plans at the last minute to foil assassinations.

And still Renarin woke each morning to Shallan’s embrace and wondered if this would be the day he lost her.

* * *

He knew before he stepped through the door that, this time, he’d come too late. The destruction cut a trail through the castle in Vedenar into the gardens. By now, the hillside was silent, only the whistle of wind across shalebark reminding him this was not another vision.

He’d walked this path before.

_The gardens._ Renarin almost laughed. He’d told Shallan not to come here, if she could help it. The place she died was the same in every vision, and the best way to prevent a vision coming true was to change where it happened, or who was there.

This time, he’d managed neither.

She’d told him not to be ridiculous. He would find her there, she said, and with so many plants and such expensive fertilizer, he would be unstoppable.

Perhaps he would have been, if he’d been faster.

Jasnah was there. She had dismissed her Plate, and Stormlight had healed whatever other wounds she’d suffered. Aside from her sweaty, disheveled hair and sluggish motions, she didn’t look like someone who had just fought for her life.

Scorched shalebark nearby told him what had happened to the assassin. Jasnah rarely left bodies. Either she captured the enemy, or she Soulcast them into vapor or spark.

Jasnah took his hand. Renarin didn’t want to think about what that meant. Couldn’t make himself look at the body behind his cousin. He wasn’t breathing, and not because of Stormlight.

“He had an Honorblade,” Jasnah said. “I’m sorry, Renarin.”

He forced himself to look at her. She deserved that much.

Jasnah had Soulcast a shroud for her head; Renarin didn’t have to ask why. He’d seen Shallan’s head crushed often enough in the last eighty-five days.

Renarin didn’t kneel beside her so much as collapse. Glys glided along the ground beside him, his chiming voice making a sound very much like crying. Renarin’s vision blurred.

She was gone.

Renarin bent over her, hugging himself. Not touching her—her body. He couldn’t.

“Stay with me, Shallan,” he whispered. “Please…stay with me.”

_A room. Simple, unadorned._

_There was a window, but if it showed anything beyond white light Renarin couldn’t make it out._

_A bed, neatly made, not unlike Shallan’s bed. Renarin’s bed._ Their _bed._

_A time, almost too big to comprehend. A thousand days. Ten thousand. More._

_A desk in the corner, with a figure frozen in the act of writing a letter. She looked no different than she had an hour ago. Red hair in a long braid. Pale, freckled skin. Blue eyes, sad, over a smile that promised a witty greeting._

_The desk faced away from Renarin, but Shallan had turned. She almost seemed to be looking at him._

_Renarin’s breath caught. His feet carried him to the desk, to the letter Shallan was writing. A single line. He heard it in her voice._

_“I will stay with you,” Shallan had written. “Until the day you die.”_


End file.
